Maximo Park

Paul Smith, Maximo Park's frontman, was the Ray Davies of the so called "new generation" of the 2000s: a poignant chronicler of his times who used addictive Devo-ish hooks and Television-esque riffs to capture the attention of his audience. The effervescent poppy sound of A Certain Trigger (2005) was ultimately just a more streamlined version of Franz Ferdinand and the Futureheads, and perhaps also the catchiest of the three: Signal and Sign evokes Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers, The Night I Lost My Head and Going Missing hark back to Merseybeat, but The Coast Is Always Changing sounds like a poor man's version of XTC and too many songs are simply trivial and tedious. The punk-ish Apply Some Pressure and Now I'm All Over The Shop lack the punch that could make them memorable.

Our Earthly Pleasures (2007) was more varied and refined (Girls Who Play Guitars, Karaoke Plays) but lacked the verve and infectiousness of the debut. Fashionable music for a few months.

Missing Songs (Warp, 2006) is a collection of B sides.

Quicken The Heart (Warp, 2009) contains The Kids Are Sick Again and Wraithlike, but it's just routine by a band that never had any idea other than jump on somebody else's bandwagon.

Paul Smith debuted solo with Margins (2009).

Maximo Park's The National Health (Straight To The Sun, 2012) aimed at being a sociopolitical fresco but forgot to include some music other than the title-track The National Health. Then came Too Much Information (2014), then Risk to Exist (2017) which sounded like a collection of leftovers, then the conversion to synth-pop with Nature Always Wins (2021).